


Butterflies and Void

by Quartise



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: 19th Century, Kind of angsty, M/M, moonlit cemeteries and strangers, writer Johnny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 09:12:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18258260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quartise/pseuds/Quartise
Summary: The cemetery is where they meet.





	Butterflies and Void

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my third fic!
> 
> It seems I cannot write anything besides one-shots, so here is another!
> 
> Enjoy.

They meet at the cemetery.

Johnny, intensely scribbling into his tattered notebook, loose pages threatening to fall out, stops suddenly and looks up at the bright, nearly full moon. No clouds in sight, the moonlight bathing the whole cemetery in a certain gloom, one that cannot be found anywhere else.

He soaks it in, it all. The light, shadows, gravestones, the starless sky. All of it generating images in his head he cannot begin to describe. The pen flies over the paper again, his mind creating line for line, completely succumbing to the feelings that flood him.

Ever since he was small, he tried to capture emotions, impressions, because they are fleeting, temporary, gone. He doesn’t want to lose them, or the thought of them.

Lost in his writing, he doesn’t notice the rather tall frame who is nearing, ever so slowly.

He does although when the stranger steps on an old branch, the cracking sound echoing over the dead, attracting Johnny’s attention.

As if caught, the stranger draws a surprised face, and Johnny can sense he is contemplating if he should turn around and run, judging by his tense posture, or if he should stay.

Their eyes lock, and Johnny is in awe at the stranger’s face; hardly ever has he seen such beauty in his life, fair skin and hazelnut hair lit up by the moonlight, complementing his features, eyes dark and reflecting.

After a couple of seconds of the silent stare-down, Johnny looks down at the poem he just started, his hand itching to start writing again, to pin down all this beauty he is confronted with, all this excitement, all this mystery-

‘What are you doing here at this hour of the night?’, the stranger asks Johnny, his baritone voice carrying far over the dead earth.

Johnny looks up at the new face again with wonder written all over his features. The stranger still looks like he is about to sprint away, like a deer caught in the headlights, and now that he talked he looks even more on edge.

Laying his pen on the current page and closing the small notebook, he gestures at it, almost placantingly.

‘I’m writing.’

He tries the smile to ease the stranger, and to his relief it works, the other’s shoulders dropping down a bit while stepping off the branch.

Some agonizingly quiet seconds pass, the cemetery being far from the town centre, not that many people are around at this time anyway.

‘Mind keeping me company?’

The stranger’s eyes once again widen, but this time without anxious tension, only in genuine surprise.

He wordlessly makes his way over to Johnny, putting his hands into the pockets of his long coat.

Johnny pats the grass beside him in an invitation for the other male to sit down with him, and to his joy the other squats down with a groan before plopping onto the soft grass.

The stranger puts his legs up and leans back, looking into the black night sky, spare for the moon.

‘My name is Johnny. What’s yours?’

He doesn’t know where the courage comes from, his heart beating fast in his chest, but something about the person in front of him puts him at ease, and somehow irritates him at the same time.

‘Jaehyun. My name is Jaehyun’, the other replies while closing his eyes, seconds later letting his back hit the ground, a heavy sigh leaving his lips.

For some time, Johnny just sits there, feeling awkward, while Jaehyun just lies in the grass, occasionally opening his eyes to look up into the sky.

The man of many emotions he is though, it doesn’t take too long until he opens his notebook again and starts writing, trying to fit his newfound inspiration into words.

After some seconds he forgets his surroundings again, completely absorbed in his own world, chasing word after word to not forget a single thing, his mind spinning with the fervor.

He only snaps out of it when he feels the stranger’s face near his, breathing on his neck, looking over his shoulder at Johnny’s pen drawing lines forming words on the empty paper.

‘I am not this good-looking, comparing me to an angel is too high of a praise for my mere self.’

Johnny hastily closes his notebook, a flush creeping over his neck, not visible to the untrained eye in the darkness.

‘It is not nice to sniff around in people’s private matters’, Johnny tries to counter, knowing it’s a weak answer but not minding if it means sparing him from the embarrassment that inevitably comes with explaining just how stunning the other man is, just how outer-worldly.

‘Please excuse my ever-curious self’, the other adds, genuineness clear in his voice, a quiet laughter accompanying the statement nonetheless.

When he leans back again, Johnny thinks Jaehyun looks like art, art that should hang in a museum, but too precious to be seen by all the hungry eyes, intimate. He could drown in the view.

But before his mind takes over again, he shakes his head, trying to clear his mind of this infatuation, and lies down beside the other, looking up as well, the tree a couple metres beside them still in his peripheral vision.

‘Of all places, why choose a graveyard to write? And at this time of the night? There surely are better places to maintain this hobby.’

Jaehyun turns his head to face Johnny, and when their eyes meet, their faces are barely enough apart, sending Johnny nearly into cardiac arrest again, and amusing Jaehyun.

Before he answers he looks up at the moon, turning away.

‘I like the feeling it gives me, and feelings are all I write about. The isolation is an added bonus. Also, my writing is not a hobby, my goal is to live from it, for everyone to read my poems and be caught in emotions they might have never felt before.’

‘That’s a high set goal. How is it going so far? Did you manage to publish something yet?’

Johnny’s insides curl, publishing is something he doesn’t like thinking, and even less, talking about. More often than not he gets a letter sent back to his little, shared flat, stating that the publisher is inconsolable but at the moment they cannot print his work. Or he doesn’t get an answer at all.

‘A small newspaper once published a poem of mine, but only because it fit their theme of the month. They ran out of money soon and don’t print any longer, so count this however you want.’

‘You’re not giving up though? I really like that bit you wrote about me’, Jaehyun replies with a smile in his voice just when Johnny starts regretting telling him the truth, now shaken by the support he received.

‘By any chance, are you a writer too?’

‘No.. Writing has never been my milieu. I am very keen of the arts though.’

And that’s when the switch in Johnny’s brain clicks.

‘So you draw?’

‘I paint, yes. Barely surviving from selling sketches on the street, but surviving.’

If Johnny thought he couldn’t be more fascinated with Jaehyun, he fell into a trap, because now his mind is providing images of the other painting a blank canvas with the most beautiful colours, bringing nothing to life, making flowers bloom and rivers flow.

‘Do you have something on you? A sketch, a little drawing, anything? If yes, please let me have a look’, Johnny musters with high interest written all over his face, trying to contain his barely containable excitement.

He doesn’t fail to notice the shift in Jaehyun’s posture which has been very relaxed until now.

The slight smile Jaehyun has been wearing during their conversation is gone when he speaks up again, having contemplated for some moments.

‘Are you sure? You might not like what you will see.’

‘Let me be the judge of that.’

Feeling somewhat uneasy but still unbearably curious, he sends Jaehyun an encouraging nod, the other finally sitting up to reach into his breast pocket.

The next time Johnny sees his hand it is holding a piece of paper, about the size of a postcard, the back to him.

‘May I?’

Without another word Jaehyun hands him the drawing, avoiding eye contact and only looking at Johnny’s hands receiving the paper.

When he turns it around, he nearly gasps out loud.

The drawing shows a river bank at night, the only used colours being dark blues and greys. Something about it has him feeling like falling, being sucked into the centre of it, the dark colours taking over the whole paper, suffocating him.

It is beautiful, so beautiful, but it makes his chest feel tight, feel like he can’t breathe.

He hands it back to Jaehyun, who quickly pockets it again, still not looking up into Johnny’s eyes.

‘That was… Wow. You have talent.’

Every word he says he utters with conviction, because the drawing is pure art. But now a nagging feeling is not letting go of him.

‘Thank you’, is all Jaehyun mutters, looking at the tree before letting his eyes drift over the seemingly endless gravestones.

‘I mean it. The way you conveyed so much with just one picture…’

And that’s when it strikes him. 

The uneasiness, the falling, the suffocating.

‘When did you draw that?’

He feels like he knows the answer already.

‘Tonight. Maybe an hour ago.’

Jaehyun vehemently avoids eye contact and before Johnny knows it, the other is lying on his back again, eyes closed. And his hand directly beside Johnny’s.

He doesn’t move it, their pinkies touching, and after Jaehyun doesn’t move his either he takes up the last bits of courage he has and wraps his pinky around the other’s, trying to squeeze, to hold, to comfort.

Jaehyun just sighs in response, a bit of tension leaving his body.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘About the drawing?’

‘Not directly. About your feelings when you drew this.’

Jaehyun’s pinky moves under his, trying to wrap around Johnny’s as well, but because both their minds are fixated in their only current touching point they grow quiet, until Jaehyun gives up and takes a heart to move his hand away from Johnny’s, only to then wrap his fingers around the other’s, squeezing tightly.

Without a second thought Johnny squeezes back as good as possible, feeling the fear of the other, trying to ease him.

Finally Jaehyun opens his eyes again, locking with Johnny’s, dark and unreadable.

‘I didn’t feel anything.’

Ah. That’s it. The feeling Johnny couldn’t pinpoint, or rather, the lack thereof.

‘Emptiness’, Johnny whispers.

‘Void’, Jaehyun responds before relaxing again and looking up into the sky, eyes dull.

‘What do you feel now?’

Johnny is scared of the answer, but he also doesn’t know what else to say.

‘Imagine you’re standing in a cave, not seeing a thing, surrounded by complete darkness, when suddenly, there is a spark. So tiny you would’ve missed it, if it wasn’t for the black surrounding you making the yellow and gold seem even brighter.’

Turning his head at the words yellow and gold, he looks Johnny deep in the eyes and they come to a silent understanding, that this night is no ordinary night, for neither of them.

They stay like this, hand in hand, fingers playing, silently star-gazing, only that there are no stars to gaze at, just the flashy moon.

When Johnny’s eyes start drooping, Jaehyun stays at his side, not letting go of his hand, his anchor of comfort, the spark lighting up his night.

When Johnny’s eyes don’t open again and his breathing is steady, he wonders, looking at the brown haired male, trying to burn every little feature of the other into the last corners of his brain, so he will never forget them. 

Or at least not until he is home, canvas ready.

The moonlight makes Johnny look ethereal, his rhythmic breaths calming the storm inside Jaehyun’s heart.

Time passes as Jaehyun gazes at the resting male in front of him, and at some point his eyelids are getting heavy as well, threatening to fall close.

He can’t allow that, not when they are lying in the grass of a cemetery, hand in hand.

The thought of someone finding them sends shivers down Jaehyun’s spine, the fear of it enough to kick him back into consciousness.

With as much caution as he can muster he sits up, and with much reluctance he takes his hand away as well, the loss of contact making him feel cold.

Holding his breath, he leans over Johnny, taking his notebook. The pen is inside of it just as he hoped, and without hesitation he writes his address on the back of his drawing, as neat as possible.

He opens it again, putting the pen back in and with it his drawing, a warm feeling swimming in his chest as he closes the notebook. Not euphoric, but a gloom of orange in all the black.

Putting the notebook back onto the grass softly, he deems it his time to leave, not wanting to wake up the other who sleeps peacefully, mainly in fear of saying goodbye. 

So he just hopes for the best as he rises to his feet, quiet as ever, but when he looks down at the other, moonlight dancing on his skin, an urge he hasn’t felt in a long time overcomes him.

Crouching down again, he leans in to cup the other’s face with one hand, thumb softly caressing the other’s cheek, the corners of his lips tugging up just the slightest bit.

Before he can help himself he is leaning down to press a chaste kiss to the other’s cheek, making Johnny stir slightly in his sleep.

Jaehyun giggles quietly before he gets up with restraint again, this time set to leave.

He is gone as quietly as he had approached, only leaving a drawing and the imprint of a kiss behind.

/

When Johnny wakes up because of an especially cold breeze, he realizes dawn is upon him, and before he knows it he shoots up, panic in his veins because he fell asleep in the cemetery again.

After some seconds of shock, he grabs his notebook to get up and leave as fast as possible, not wanting to meet the keeper again, the last encounter not being a good one.

He takes the first step when he suddenly remembers, remembers last night, the cold and warmth of the other, and all of a sudden his heart is aching.

He kind of saw it coming but it still hits him hard that Jaehyun left without waking him up, without saying a thing.

Before he can deepen that thought he should make his exit though, so he aims for exactly that with quick steps, absentmindedly opening his notebook while doing so, just to check if his pen is in it and if he didn’t lose his current page.

He nearly trips when he sees the drawing, his heart suddenly heavy, stopping dead in his tracks to gently take it and look at it again, turning it around out of habit, just to see an address and a name written on it with very pretty handwriting.

To say he feels euphoric doesn’t even describe the relief and joy that are flooding him, so he makes sure to securely put the drawing between the pages and starts walking again, excitement brimming in his veins, making him walk faster.

He can’t wait to write about Jaehyun.

/

_He can’t wait to draw Johnny._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, kudos and comments make me feel all fuzzy inside >.<
> 
> Hit me up to talk to me about anything!
> 
> Twitter: @jenoberries  
> cc: oO0quartiseO0o


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